Xiang Yun Opens Up About How Her Dad, Who Wanted To Be An Actor And Had Minor Roles In Films, Was Pivotal In Her Start In Showbiz

Xiang Yun's showbiz career may span an impressive 45 years, but the 64-year-old veteran actress still remembers how her father played a pivotal role to the start of her career when she first entered the industry as a teenager. 

“Since I was very young, my father always had a lot of advice for me,” she shared on the latest episode of Jeanette Aw's JA Unscripted YouTube show.

Recalling how she joined Rediffusion, Singapore's first cable-transmitted, commercial radio station, at a young age as part of its sixth batch of children’s acting classes, Xiang Yun said she learned how to act and carry herself by observing the senior broadcasters around her.

She then added: "I also need to give credit to my father."

"My father used to really want to be an actor, a celebrity. My father was very handsome, and at one point, he was even approached to act in films. So he went, and took on some minor roles," she said. 

However, because he had to support the family, Xiang Yun’s father set aside his own dreams and took on a job as a taxi driver.

As such, when Xiang Yun heard from a classmate that Rediffusion was recruiting child broadcasters and told her father about it, he encouraged her to go for it without hesitation.

"Every Saturday, without fail, he would send me there. When class ended, around six or seven, he would come back to pick me up. And he did it rain or shine."

"So he was the one who made me who I am — the one who put me in that environment to learn proper Chinese," said Xiang Yun. 

She shared that learning Chinese wasn’t easy when she was younger, especially since pinyin wasn’t taught back then, so many people’s pronunciation was often influenced by their dialects.

She recalled that when she was in Primary 1 or 2, she would bring her textbooks to her father and ask him to teach her. Xiang Yun said her father’s Chinese wasn’t strong either, and he would read aloud with a dialect accent, just as he had been taught by his own father.

Despite that, she said he made a real effort to help her and eventually improved his own Chinese along the way. "He also understood the value of me learning Chinese, so he paid close attention to what I was learning," she added. 

Fast forward to Secondary 4, Xiang Yun heard that Radio and Television of Singapore (RTS), the predecessor of the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), was recruiting for its acting training class. It was during the black-and-white TV era, and when she told her father about it, he supported her fully once again.

With his encouragement, she went for the opportunity — and the rest, as they say, is history.

Photos: Mediacorp, JA Unscripted/ YouTube

Catch the full episode of Jeanette and Xiang Yun’s chat on YouTube, or watch it below.